MOAR CORRIDOR!! You can never have enough CORRIDOR! While it's a hallway we've walked down many times over, urdailywater gives us a fresh spin that blends ambient/chill components with some cinematic bits and then adds some soft jazz on top, with some SMOOD solo sax work from Joe:

"Hey, guys, I'm submitting again. This time a song that doesn't get enough attention on OCR in my honest opinion. (/sarcasm) This song was something different for me, and a challenge. Going into it, I had the plan to change up the soundscape drastically throughout the song, which is something I've never done before. It got me into a roadblock down the road in the writing process, but hopefully I've got an arrangement that works now.

Inspiration stuff... well, the first part, I'm not entirely sure where inspiration for that came from. I was just kind of messing around with the harp sample and started adding stuff. 1:22 and onward until the piano section was heavily inspired by the first part of the OP from the anime Clannad. Then the piano section coming in was inspired by McVaffe's piano breakdown in "Celestial Winds from the East." This was also the first time I ever humanized a piano with both bass and lead parts, and was extremely fun to do.

Production-wise, I think it's some of my best work. The soundscape stays filled out, even while changing up. I refined this submission a lot since the last one, basically restarting the project. In about 6 hours, I re-sequenced the entire song, and about that time XPRTNovice found me in the WIP forums said he wanted to record a saxophone over this piece. About 2 days later, he gave me a few takes, and I rolled with this one. I took some more crits from the WIP forum, and this is the end result.

Huge thanks to XPRTNovice for pulling this off. The solo he put in really helps the piece a bunch, and the playing is absolutely gorgeous. If you're going to love anything about this song, it should be the sax.

Funny but relevant note: I never played through Chrono Trigger when I started this song, so when you guys said this had Schala in it, I had no idea what you were talking about until I ran into the theme on Chrono Trigger DS. The similarities between the two are completely coincidental, but if you want to count that middle section as Schala, feel free to do so. :P Yup. I think I covered everything. A lot more than I expected to say, but whatever. Enjoy! Thanks for listening!"

There's one thing that bugs me about this mix, and it's ENTIRELY selfish & personal - I've been working on my OWN arrangement of this theme on & off for years now, and it's gonna be similar in at least the sense that it'll feature smooth sax. Aaron & Joe got there first; you snooze, you lose! Actually I still think my own take will be different enough, but one of the things that comes up in this community from time to time is when you've got this PERFECT idea for an arrangement of a given theme, and someone else beats you to the punch... c'est la vie! This mix offers an odd amalgam of different feels that end up complementing one another nicely; at various points, this sounds like a straight soft jazz jam, a chill/downtempo piece, an orchestral hybrid arrangement, a solo piano mix, and probably several more genres/structures, but the morphing is subtle & seamless. Of the resubmitted & approved version of this mix, Larry writes:

"...this is definitely a good step up in the overall execution. A good portion of that leap forward comes from Joe's involvement, but going beyond that, Aaron did a much better job giving better depth and realism to the instrumentation he employed, which filled in the soundscape nicely compared to the old version. This was a fuller, richer experience than before and safely gets it above the bar."

Not only is this version a substantial improvement over its prototype, it's also a more complete & unified arrangement than its predecessors, showing that Aaron has grown as an artist over the last year. Palpable adds:

"This song has been covered and rearranged more times than I've eaten pizza but there's so much potential in music to do something new and different. I haven't heard a remix of this song quite like this before and while it wasn't perfect, there was a lot to like. The sax is the key ingredient here, really setting it apart and adding a much needed live element, but the larger track is well put-together. I agree with Jesse that the piano breakdown was a little weak, but whatyagondo. Overall this was good."

Agreed; while there are still subtle aspects of the overall instrumentation & execution that aren't quite as solid, overall this is an elaborate, complete arrangement whose potential was unlocked by Joe's sax. Props to Aaron & Joe on cooking up another take on an intimately familiar source and doing something different with it!

Discussion

Yeah, I remember this from the Workshop forums, it's nice to see
it posted now! With even all the tasty sax in there, my favourite
part is 1:23-1:40.. the bells sound so very good there, I'm not
sure if the (lovely) clock sample from the beginning is there in
the background, but it works very well with the clock motif.

That's an incredibly sexy sax we have going on in this ReMix.
Honestly, I liked the piano myself, but I could understand where
the judges were coming from with their critiques. Matter of
taste, I guess. For a source (or two, or an entire game for that
matter) that has been done an awful lot, it's still great to hear
a nice, new arrangement from other ReMixers. Good stuff, guys.

Thanks for all the comments ya'll. I knew people would love
XPRTNovice's saxiness. : D I'm actually surprised that people
liked the piano stuff seeing the flack it got from some of the
judges. I personally enjoyed it myself, and was hoping everyone
else would : D

Nice work! Clannad has some very good music and I hope it
influences more mixes.

I requested someone actually make a Clannad remix a while back,
seeing as pretty much the whole soundtrack (OP and ED included)
comes from the game that it was based off of.

I don't like I"m cool enough to touch something like Dango
Daikazoku. Yet.

Oh my gosh! I've been waiting forever to see this mix posted. I
loved listening to its evolution in the workshops. And I disagree
with Palpable: the piano solo is a nice contradiction to tone
down the richness of the rest of the piece.

The saxophone is indeed nice. The entire arrangement stands out
to me as being quite beautiful, though. It has a calm, almost
mystical feel to it. This is a very nice mix!

Side note: I previewed on Youtube first, and I think there
might be something wrong with the version there. Around the
piano solo segment there was a lot of "fuzzing" and the song
occasionally dropped out entirely.

The fuzzing should be in the original song too. It was something
with my Piano sample that would happen if it were to hold onto
the notes for too long. I EQ'd as much as I could out but it's
still noticeable. Not sure about the dropping out, though.

I do wish I could re-do the drums on this one now. They'd be
like, 1000x better.

The saxophone is indeed nice. The entire arrangement stands out
to me as being quite beautiful, though. It has a calm, almost
mystical feel to it. This is a very nice mix!

Side note: I previewed on Youtube first, and I think there might
be something wrong with the version there. Around the piano solo
segment there was a lot of "fuzzing" and the song occasionally
dropped out entirely.

I think I remember hearing this before. Nice job! I agree that
the piano breakdown could have been filled out a bit more,
perhaps with a pad or an arp-playing ambient bell. Drums got a
tad lost. Otherwise, great take on a classic theme!

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